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NORTH AMERICAN INDEXSUBSECTIONS
CANADA |
MEXICO |
USA
Communitas Main Index
CANADA
NORTHERN QUEBEC MUST NOT BECOME ANOTHER CHIAPAS
Quebec nationalists of the ruling Party Quebecois look forward to the day they win a referendum on independence. The Native People of Quebec, on the other hand, look upon such an event with unease. Their position is plain - 95% of Indians and Inuit voted to remain in Canada in the 1995 referendum. This was not the result of any great love for the Canadian state, but is an outcome of the history of relations between natives and their European conquerors. In 1670 the territory which is now Northern Quebec was seized by a coterie of English monopolists called the Hudson's Bay Company. The indigenous people were treated like serfs for the next two hundred years when the territory was ceded, without their permission, to the Dominion of Canada. In 1912 the territory was given to the Province of Quebec by the Dominion Government, and once more the inhabitants - who had been there for ten thousand years - were not consulted. 'Enough of this! it is now up to us to determine our future' say the native people. They do not wish to be pushed from pillar to post any longer.
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FREEDOM May 1998
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CANADA - FACT FILE
Pop. 29.1 million
Pop. per sq. km. 3
Human Develop. Index 95
Av. Inf. 89-95 3.0%
Main Export Dest. USA (81.7%)
Foreign Debt N/A
Cost of living 63
(Dec 95 New York=83)
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MEXICO
(see also main article)
LETTER FROM MARCOS
We have things now which we did not have before, and it is very little compared with all the needs. But the difference between what we lacked before and what we lack now, is that, before, it did not matter to anyone that we did not have the minimal necessities. What we did have before January 1, 1994, and what we have lost since then, is despair, is bitterness, is resignation.
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January 1999
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MEXICO - FACT FILE
Pop. 91.9 million
Pop. per sq. km. 48
Human Develop. Index 84
Av. Inf. 89-95 12.2%
Main Export Dest. US (69.4%)
Foreign Debt 35.2% of GDP
Cost of living 62
(Dec 95 New York=100)
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LAND AND LIBERTY IN MEXICO
The uprising in Chiapas which began on January 1st 1994 - coinciding with the signing of the NAFTA agreement - immediately confirmed two open secrets. The one was that the Mexican economy was in a mess. Despite the efforts to achieve equal status with the rich nations this top-of-the-form pupil of IMF and World Bank policies suffers from such serious internal divisions that it just doesn't make the grade. The second was the knowledge that an uprising would occur for the actions of the Zapatistas had been long in the coming. MORE...
USA
JUDGE RULES AGAINST CITY IN CRITICAL MASS ARRESTS
In a rebuke to San Francisco Police mass arrest tactics, a judge has ruled in favor of bicyclists who were rounded up at the July 1997 Critical Mass ride.
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January 1999
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USA - FACT FILE
Pop. 260.5 million
Pop. per sq. km. 28
Human Develop. Index 94
Av. Inf. 89-95 3.7%
Main Export Dest. Canada (19.1%)
Foreign Debt N/A
Cost of living 100
(Sept 94 New York=100)
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Don't Forget Chiapas
The story so far
"We will not bow and scrape, we will not demand charity or pick at the crunbs that fall from the tables of power. We demand what is right and what is the reason for living: liberty, justice, democracy, everything for everyone, nothing for ourselves!"
When the faceless indigenous people of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), appeared, armed, on 1st January 1994 and the first negotiations with Mexico began, thus they announced, clearly, the reasons for their struggle.
After such a long struggle alongside the civil society from which they emerged, the Zapatistas seemed in 1996, to be nearing the end of their painful and historic journey. They signed, with the government, on February 16th, the Accords of San Andres, drawn up with the aid of national and international experts on indigenous questions. However, the draft legislation and the constitutional changes, proposed on the 29th November by the Commission for Agreement and Peace (Cocopa), was rejected by the Mexican régime in the name of national sovereignty and speaking of a risk of Balkanisation. Autonomy, as understood by the Zapatistas, is in no way a synonynym for secession or seperatism. Safeguards were included in the San Andres agreement to ensure that constitutional guarantees were not weakened in particular with regard to human rights and the dignity of women.
The political cost of a military solution was too high for Zedillo in so far as a new military clash, however limited, risked pushing the markets into panic. Waging on time and forgetfullness and bringing together welfare and counter-insurgency plans, the régime aimed to slowly erode the Zapatistas strength by means of an encirclement which would prove both silent and deadly. Militarisation, proliferation of civil militias, harassment, violence... More than 100 anonymous deaths have paid the price since the interuptions, two years ago, of negotiations.
Since then President Ernesto Zedillo has called for direct negotiations with the EZLN. Once bitten, twice shy the insurgents prefer to look for a solution by working with the civil society they are a part of and with whom they met last November at a conference attended by over 3,000. They have called for a national consultation on 21st March calling on the Mexican people to address the issue of incorporating the law regarding indigenous people into the constitution. One way of reopening the debate less than a year before the presidential elections...
Source: Le Monde Diplomatique - March 1999
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